Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Ciena announced plans for commercial version of the Open Networking Operating System (ONOS). Blue Planet ONOS will extend Ciena’s Blue Planet network orchestration software to enable highly-scalable, flow-based control of data center networks.

Ciena said its hardened version of ONOS, to be marketed as Blue Planet ONOS, will give service providers the ability to take advantage of the cumulative software expertise of the open source community combined with the level of assurance and support that users require for commercial deployment. Any enhancements Ciena makes to ONOS for customer engagements will be fed back into the open source community. Ciena’s Blue Planet ONOS, which aligns with the Falcon release of ONOS, is projected to be available in the first calendar quarter of 2016.

“Our mission at the ONOS project has been to produce an open source network operating system that enables service providers and vendors to build real software-defined networks. We are excited that Ciena, a recognized leader and advocate for open, programmable networks, will bring this vision to market with Blue Planet ONOS and really appreciate its commitment to contributing bug fixes and enhancements back to open source. In one short year, we have gone from inception to commercial maturity – this is a validation of the power of open source innovation,” stated Guru Parulkar, Co-Founder and Executive Director ON.Lab and Chairman of the ONOS Board

“As with all Blue Planet software development and support, Ciena embarked on this effort with the LINUX Foundation and ON.Lab as a result of customer demand and engagements. Ciena’s support of ONOS re-affirms our commitment to open source technology and reflects our position as a leader in the global, software-based network transformation movement," said Mike Hatfield, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Blue Planet, Ciena and Director on the ONOS Project Board of Directors

ONOS, the open source SDN networking operating system for Service Provider networks, released its fifth generation platform.

"When we initially released ONOS, our goal was to provide a solid platform that would act as a base on which ON.Lab, its partners and the community could rapidly develop a number of SDN applications," said Thomas Vachuska, Chief Architect at ON.Lab's ONOS project. "ONOS' growing list of SDN and NFV use cases and solutions is a testament to the robustness of its initial distributed architecture design. Even as we add more features, it continues to provide high availability, scalability, performance, and the rich north- and southbound abstractions required for service provider and mission critical networks."

The Emu release, which keeps to a quarterly update cycle, brings improvements to the platform such as IP Multicast and SDN-IP and key use cases including Central Office Re-Architected as a Data Center (CORD), Packet/Optical, service function chaining (SFC) and support for the Open Platform for NFV Project (OPNFV) and OpenStack.

IHS is forecasting that a cumulative $6.5 billion will be spent worldwide on outdoor small cell backhaul equipment between 2015 and 2019.

The latest IHS Infonetics Small Cell Mobile Backhaul Equipment report tracks equipment used for transporting traffic from outdoor small cell sites, such as those attached to light poles, utility poles, and the sides and tops of buildings. Some highlights:

Much of the activity in the small cell market continues to be around indoor small cells, as in-building spaces in public venues often have problematic macro-based mobile network coverage

In 2015, the global small cell mobile backhaul equipment market is forecast to grow 143 percent from the previous year

Around 75,000 outdoor small cell backhaul connections are projected to be deployed in 2015, rising to 960,000 in 2019

Point-to-point (P2P) microwave is anticipated to account for just under a third of total small cell backhaul equipment revenue in 2015, the highest of any technology

“As outdoor small cell deployments scale up, we look for the small cell backhaul equipment market to kick into higher gear in 2017, when it will reach over $1.2 billion. This year we started to see the early ramp-up beginning, while trials are still ongoing for many operators,” said Richard Webb, research director for mobile backhaul and small cells at IHS.

Transtelecom JSC, one of the largest service providers in the Republic of Kazakhstan, has deployed 100G DWDM optical transport equipment from Ekinops across its country-wide optical network and to the border of China.

Transtelecom owns more than thirteen thousand kilometers of fiber-optic cables throughout Kazakhstan, primarily along the railway lines. Transtelecom wanted to increase its backbone capacity in Kazakhstan and their ability to carry high capacity from China across to Russia. A major requirement for serving customers in China is providing low latency and the Ekinops solution was able to meet this and other requirements.

Huawei Marine is working with Ooredoo Maldives to deploy a Nation-wide Fiber Optic Submarine Cable to the Maldives.

The nationwide submarine cable, which will span 1,200k, will use Huawei Marine’s 100G technology. The cable will address the country’s increasing communication needs across developing islands and new resort locations.

“As the internet continues to bring remarkable value to individuals, families and businesses around the world, we firmly believe that it is the right of each and every individual to be connected to the abundant benefits of the internet,” said Vikram Sinha, CEO of Ooredoo. “With this is mind, we are proud to take this revolutionary step that will enable us to connect our communities to a fast and reliable broadband internet and support their digital lifestyles from wherever they are in the Maldives.”

Ooredoo’s Nationwide Submarine Cable is expected to be completed by the end of 2016.http://www.huawei.com

US Internet is preparing to launch 2.5 and 5 Gbps fiber Internet service in Q1 2016 via its "Active Ethernet" fiber platform for residents and businesses of the City of Minneapolis.

USI launched a 10G service in Minneapolis a year ago. The new services bridge the gap in speed. Plans now include 1, 2.5, 5 and 10 Gbps at $65/mo., $99/mo., $199/mo. and $399/mo., respectively.

Travis Carter, CTO and Co-Founder of US Internet, said: "Our top local goal is to connect with the community and make the City of Minneapolis the most connected city in the U.S. Through this expanded high-speed Internet initiative, USI continues to empower Minneapolis residents and businesses with leading edge and extremely cost-effective technology solutions to meet their ever-growing digital needs without bottlenecks, slowdowns or hidden fees."

BM MobileFirst will extend Vodafone Ready Business, which includes communications solutions aimed at helping businesses become more flexible, innovative, collaborative and responsive to their customers and employees. The IBM and Vodafone collaboration will help further drive mobile adoption among enterprise organizations in the Netherlands.

“Vodafone has always been at the forefront of enterprise mobility. In collaborating with IBM, we are drawing on the enterprise expertise of both companies, combining Vodafone’s strengths in enterprise mobility management and 4G connectivity with IBM’s industry, mobile and integration knowledge,” said Alexander Saul, Director Enterprise Business Unit Vodafone Netherlands. “Together, we are empowering our enterprise clients with enhanced mobile capabilities that simplify business processes, increase employee productivity, enable deeper customer engagement and drive overall growth.”https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/48499.wss

IBM inaugurated its global headquarters for Watson Internet of Things (IoT) in Munich, launching a series of new offerings, capabilities and ecosystem partners designed to extend the power of cognitive computing to the billions of connected devices, sensors and systems that comprise the IoT. These new offerings will be available through the IBM Watson IoT Cloud, the company’s global platform for IoT business and developers.

IBM said its campus in Munich will bring together 1,000 IBM developers, consultants, researchers and designers to drive deeper engagement with clients and partners, and will also serve as an innovation lab for data scientists, engineers and programmers building a new class of connected solutions at the intersection of cognitive computing and the IoT.